Saying Goodbye, and Saying Hello

For the last 13 years I have been very fortunate to have worked in the IT Department of American Electric Power (AEP). I am thankful that a panel of interviewers took the time to interview a young Canadian kid (less than a year out of school) for a contractor position doing web development. When I started my position, I was told that I was awarded the contract because I told them honestly when I didn’t have the answers, but would do research and enjoy the opportunity to learn – and learning I did. Over the course of my career, I transitioned to be a full time employee (10 years ago) and have enjoyed a consistent career growth ever since. Working at AEP has taught me many things – programming languages, application architecture, data modeling, system architecture (scalable design), business (proposals, business cases and the like), and much much more (it’s hard to abbreviate 13 years!!). I am very thankful for the many friendships that I have established there, and these friendships are what makes it so difficult to say goodbye. My last day as an employee of AEP will be January 25th.

I’ve decided to follow my passion. I’m taking my favorite things that I enjoy from my position at AEP and the developer community at large – and I will now get to do them full time. I love working with people – mentoring, problem solving, playing with toys technology, talking endlessly about technology, and helping developers rekindle their passion for what they do. To enable me to do this, I will be joining the ranks of Telerik as a Developer Evangelist, focusing on WinForms, Reporting and Control Panel. As a Developer Evangelist, I will get to be involved in the developer community more, and connect with people on a much larger scale. I’m looking forward to promoting the awesome offerings from Telerik, they certainly make it easy to fuel the passion! I will bring with me the experience of many years of corporate development, and my appreciation of improving UX for increased user satisfaction and productivity.

It’s a very scary thing making a career change after 13 years of habit, at the same time in pursuing the things I am passionate about- it is also exhilarating!